Long, long ago (somewhere between 3 and 6 years old), in a land far, far away (maybe Salt Lake City or Provo) lived our unlikely hero, Bryan. The details of exactly how the scenario started are pretty faded, so someday I might cross-check this with Brad since he remembers our childhood way better than I do. Our mom was dating or married to a man named Dave. He was a loser, but whatever. One day we all went to the store in Dave’s Chevy Nova car. The Nova was considered pretty cool back in the day.

Anyway, as happened in those days, they just left us in the car. Brad and I were not very good at just sitting around (duh). The parents were not very good at understanding that. So we’re sitting in the back seat of the car trying to figure out what to do. There weren’t smart phones, Nintendo Switch, or any of that magical, electrically-powered brain reducing technology that all the whipper-snappers have today. No, ma’am. We had to figure things out on our own without someone else telling us what and how to think! Okay, others told us how to think all the time, but it wasn’t shoved into our brains from random peoples’ shorts, it was shoved into our ears via shouts.

We wanted to play tic-tac-toe, but we had no paper or a pencil/pen. Lucky for us, though, one of us had found a razor blade that day and shoved it in a pocket. When I think about it, we had razor blades pretty frequently, which makes me wonder what was wrong with us. When I think about it more, what are people doing back in 1985 or thereabouts that we could easily find razor blades on the ground?! Anyway. We decided that the best place to play tic-tac-toe was on the back seat, using the razor blade to cut our marks, so that’s what we did! When they came back and Dave saw our ingenuity, he got mad mad! Maybe he was jealous that he never thought about slicing up his own car’s seats with a razor blade? I don’t’ know. It makes sense to me. Honestly, I don’t remember if Brad or I won, but since Dave was a total schmuck-face, I guess we both won in our own special way.